Good day at the museum today. Four groups of mostly adults came through with good interest in the displays. One guest pointed at the RCA VIP and said he worked on the R&D fabrication for the RCA 1802 and the related memory parts :) I ran the C64, the TRS-80 Model I, Atari, and the PC with some hello world programs to liven up the place, and had the Lisa booted. Showed well and glad those machines are working.
Doug, Thanks for being docent at the museum today! I do have programs stored on the uIEC for the Commodore 64 until we get a working 1541. I will show you how to use it. Did you get the name and phone number of that guy? I would like to get the TRS-80 keyboard and floppy drive working. Is there an SD card that can be connected to this machine? The Atari has in it's floppy drive Lode Runner. Just turn on the drive, turn on the computer and it boots. We should think of other demos that we want to run on the Atari 800. The PC also needs some good demos. On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 9:53 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Good day at the museum today. Four groups of mostly adults came through with good interest in the displays. One guest pointed at the RCA VIP and said he worked on the R&D fabrication for the RCA 1802 and the related memory parts :) I ran the C64, the TRS-80 Model I, Atari, and the PC with some hello world programs to liven up the place, and had the Lisa booted. Showed well and glad those machines are working.
No. But in all likelihood 95% of them are not fully functional. This is from experience testing various ones in the past to find a functional one. It becomes burdensome to test all of them. At some point we need to clean or repair them. If you have the time, energy and patience to test all of them, then free to do so! On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
until we get a working 1541
There are several in storage. Have we tested them all?
I'd be glad to do so at the next workshop. On Monday, December 28, 2015, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
No. But in all likelihood 95% of them are not fully functional. This is from experience testing various ones in the past to find a functional one. It becomes burdensome to test all of them. At some point we need to clean or repair them. If you have the time, energy and patience to test all of them, then free to do so!
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
until we get a working 1541
There are several in storage. Have we tested them all?
On Dec 28, 2015, at 1:40 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
No. But in all likelihood 95% of them are not fully functional. This is from experience testing various ones in the past to find a functional one. It becomes burdensome to test all of them. At some point we need to clean or repair them. If you have the time, energy and patience to test all of them, then free to do so!
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
until we get a working 1541
There are several in storage. Have we tested them all?
One of the items I donated way back when was an Indus drive… all black, not at all “Commodore-like”. But, if it’s still around, it might work. It’s an operational clone of the 1541, and IMO, was a better drive when I used it. 73 de Ray
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Ray Sills via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Dec 28, 2015, at 1:40 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
No. But in all likelihood 95% of them are not fully functional. This is from experience testing various ones in the past to find a functional one. It becomes burdensome to test all of them. At some point we need to clean or repair them. If you have the time, energy and patience to test all of them, then free to do so!
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
until we get a working 1541
There are several in storage. Have we tested them all?
One of the items I donated way back when was an Indus drive… all black, not at all “Commodore-like”. But, if it’s still around, it might work. It’s an operational clone of the 1541, and IMO, was a better drive when I used it.
73 de Ray
Can't VCFed spring for an uIEC drive then? I think it would be a worthy expense if you can't get a 1541 up and running, and/or they keep breaking down. Otherwise how did Jeff and Dan get their c64 network running? I guess these are drives owned by Jeff or Dan, not FKA MARCH VFED. -- Bill
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 11:14 AM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Otherwise how did Jeff and Dan get their c64 network running? I guess these are drives owned by Jeff or Dan, not FKA MARCH VFED.
We used uIEC for dev on actual hardware to speed things up when checking a new build. But all coding is done with VICE, even the networking - I run 9 instances to emulate 9 computers[server + players]. And then we used the drives for the exhibits for that retro/rustic look :) I just have a couple 1541s working, too many to fix still, I believe the rest belong to Jeff - might be 1 or 2 from March Dan
I owned all the 1541 drives that ran at our exhibit 2 years ago. And I even lent one or two of my own for the museum to work, but those are not working now as well. I don't want to keep loaning drives and having them not work. Most likely just need a disk head cleaning, but I just haven't had the time to open them up and try that. Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC instead to reduce power and troubleshooting. On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 11:14 AM, william degnan via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Ray Sills via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Dec 28, 2015, at 1:40 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
No. But in all likelihood 95% of them are not fully functional. This is from experience testing various ones in the past to find a functional one. It becomes burdensome to test all of them. At some point we need to
clean
or repair them. If you have the time, energy and patience to test all of them, then free to do so!
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
until we get a working 1541
There are several in storage. Have we tested them all?
One of the items I donated way back when was an Indus drive… all black, not at all “Commodore-like”. But, if it’s still around, it might work. It’s an operational clone of the 1541, and IMO, was a better drive when I used it.
73 de Ray
Can't VCFed spring for an uIEC drive then? I think it would be a worthy expense if you can't get a 1541 up and running, and/or they keep breaking down.
Otherwise how did Jeff and Dan get their c64 network running? I guess these are drives owned by Jeff or Dan, not FKA MARCH VFED.
-- Bill
On Dec 29, 2015 7:38 AM, "Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic" < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Most likely just need a disk head cleaning, but I just haven't had the
time
to open them up and try that.
I will do it at our next workshop
Why wait? This Sunday simply use a cleaning disk if that truly is the problem, and fix it? I don't think you need a workshop for that. If that does not work set up a notebook to record blink codes/state of lights for the drive (s) in the exhibits that are not working so that people can come prepared to fix specific problems. 1541 drive error symptoms and prescribed fixes are well documented online. B
Why wait? This Sunday simply use a cleaning disk if that truly is the problem, and fix it? I don't think you need a workshop for that.
I'm not proposing a special workshop. Just saying that we might as well go through all of our 1541s in one batch, and during the next workshop is a good time to do it (especially if I have questions). Frankly it will be a good learning experience for me since I'm much less experienced at vintage tech repair than most of you. Ian showed me some drive head cleaning basics a couple of workshops ago and I am pretty good at fixing stuff in general that's more mechanical than electronic.
Why wait? This Sunday simply use a cleaning disk if that truly is the problem, and fix it? I don't think you need a workshop for that.
I'm not proposing a special workshop. Just saying that we might as well go through all of our 1541s in one batch, and during the next workshop is a good time to do it (especially if I have questions).
Frankly it will be a good learning experience for me since I'm much less experienced at vintage tech repair than most of you. Ian showed me some drive head cleaning basics a couple of workshops ago and I am pretty good at fixing stuff in general that's more mechanical than electronic.
This looks very helpful: www.classiccmp.org/cini/pdf/re/Tuning%20the%201541%20(1285).pdf I'll study it ahead of the next workshop.
Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC instead to reduce power and troubleshooting.
My $.02 Aw, lets be careful about that. I like the convenience of the SD card file systems and they have their place, but working disk drives are important to the demoing history. This was clear to me at NY Maker, and also was commented to me by several individuals at VCFE. If we can't keep disk drives going, we might as well admit failure on the whole restoration scene. BTW: I think the IBM PC boot drive is bad too or the DOS floppy in the drive is bad. It boots right into ROM basic. DC
My view on this is not the fact that we are in able to keep the HARDWARE functioning. We can keep that maintained for 10000 years. The magnetic media utilized by the disk drives have been reaching their end of life, NOS boxes have been opened, used, and found to be damaging to the hardware as the media is sloughing or flaking off the Mylar of the disk itself. So the question becomes restoration vs visual preservation while not losing logical functionality. On Tuesday, December 29, 2015, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC instead
to reduce power and troubleshooting.
My $.02 Aw, lets be careful about that. I like the convenience of the SD card file systems and they have their place, but working disk drives are important to the demoing history. This was clear to me at NY Maker, and also was commented to me by several individuals at VCFE. If we can't keep disk drives going, we might as well admit failure on the whole restoration scene.
BTW: I think the IBM PC boot drive is bad too or the DOS floppy in the drive is bad. It boots right into ROM basic.
DC
-- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?
We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits. Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components. -Dave On 12/29/2015 10:06 PM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My view on this is not the fact that we are in able to keep the HARDWARE functioning. We can keep that maintained for 10000 years. The magnetic media utilized by the disk drives have been reaching their end of life, NOS boxes have been opened, used, and found to be damaging to the hardware as the media is sloughing or flaking off the Mylar of the disk itself. So the question becomes restoration vs visual preservation while not losing logical functionality.
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC instead
to reduce power and troubleshooting.
My $.02 Aw, lets be careful about that. I like the convenience of the SD card file systems and they have their place, but working disk drives are important to the demoing history. This was clear to me at NY Maker, and also was commented to me by several individuals at VCFE. If we can't keep disk drives going, we might as well admit failure on the whole restoration scene.
BTW: I think the IBM PC boot drive is bad too or the DOS floppy in the drive is bad. It boots right into ROM basic.
DC
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
-----Original Message----- From: Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2015 10:16 PM To: vcf-midatlantic Cc: Dave McGuire Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] Museum report We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits. Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components. -Dave On 12/29/2015 10:06 PM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My view on this is not the fact that we are in able to keep the HARDWARE functioning. We can keep that maintained for 10000 years. The magnetic media utilized by the disk drives have been reaching their end of life, NOS boxes have been opened, used, and found to be damaging to the hardware as the media is sloughing or flaking off the Mylar of the disk itself. So the question becomes restoration vs visual preservation while not losing logical functionality.
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC instead
to reduce power and troubleshooting.
My $.02 Aw, lets be careful about that. I like the convenience of the SD card file systems and they have their place, but working disk drives are important to the demoing history. This was clear to me at NY Maker, and also was commented to me by several individuals at VCFE. If we can't keep disk drives going, we might as well admit failure on the whole restoration scene.
BTW: I think the IBM PC boot drive is bad too or the DOS floppy in the drive is bad. It boots right into ROM basic.
DC
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Further (replying to my own post, I had another thought), be aware that there are new floppy disks being manufactured to this very day, even 8" floppies. As long as we keep buying them in sufficient volume, someone will keep making them. -Dave On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components.
-Dave
On 12/29/2015 10:06 PM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My view on this is not the fact that we are in able to keep the HARDWARE functioning. We can keep that maintained for 10000 years. The magnetic media utilized by the disk drives have been reaching their end of life, NOS boxes have been opened, used, and found to be damaging to the hardware as the media is sloughing or flaking off the Mylar of the disk itself. So the question becomes restoration vs visual preservation while not losing logical functionality.
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC instead
to reduce power and troubleshooting.
My $.02 Aw, lets be careful about that. I like the convenience of the SD card file systems and they have their place, but working disk drives are important to the demoing history. This was clear to me at NY Maker, and also was commented to me by several individuals at VCFE. If we can't keep disk drives going, we might as well admit failure on the whole restoration scene.
BTW: I think the IBM PC boot drive is bad too or the DOS floppy in the drive is bad. It boots right into ROM basic.
DC
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Agreed that there is an imperative to restore, preserve and display all of the original equipment. Part of preservation is using the equipment judiciously so as to not accelerate its demise. Using solid state emulation of disk drives in order to demonstrate software and usage is a good compromise, so that original disk drives and media can be preserved. On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 10:28 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Further (replying to my own post, I had another thought), be aware that there are new floppy disks being manufactured to this very day, even 8" floppies. As long as we keep buying them in sufficient volume, someone will keep making them.
-Dave
On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components.
-Dave
On 12/29/2015 10:06 PM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My view on this is not the fact that we are in able to keep the HARDWARE functioning. We can keep that maintained for 10000 years. The magnetic media utilized by the disk drives have been reaching their end of life,
NOS
boxes have been opened, used, and found to be damaging to the hardware as the media is sloughing or flaking off the Mylar of the disk itself. So the question becomes restoration vs visual preservation while not losing logical functionality.
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC
instead
to reduce power and troubleshooting.
My $.02 Aw, lets be careful about that. I like the convenience of the SD card file systems and they have their place, but working disk drives are important to the demoing history. This was clear to me at NY Maker, and also was commented to me by several individuals at VCFE. If we can't keep disk drives going, we might as well admit failure on the whole restoration scene.
BTW: I think the IBM PC boot drive is bad too or the DOS floppy in the drive is bad. It boots right into ROM basic.
DC
-- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On Tue, 29 Dec 2015, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Further (replying to my own post, I had another thought), be aware that there are new floppy disks being manufactured to this very day, even 8" floppies. As long as we keep buying them in sufficient volume, someone will keep making them.
-Dave
Dave, I've suspected much, but do you have a manufacturer or vendor which supplies newly manufactured floppies to recommend? I find a lot of exobitantly priced NOS arond, but would be happy to buy something new that I might be able to rely on for a couple decades...assuming of course that the quality of the new stuff matches that of the old.. -- Jason Sent from my Atari 800
On 12/06/2015 12:41 AM, Jason Howe wrote:
Further (replying to my own post, I had another thought), be aware that there are new floppy disks being manufactured to this very day, even 8" floppies. As long as we keep buying them in sufficient volume, someone will keep making them.
I've suspected much, but do you have a manufacturer or vendor which supplies newly manufactured floppies to recommend? I find a lot of exobitantly priced NOS arond, but would be happy to buy something new that I might be able to rely on for a couple decades...assuming of course that the quality of the new stuff matches that of the old..
Check out Athana. They make tapes of various sorts, too, as well as disk packs for removable hard drives. (BTW, someone's clock is set wrong, and I'm quite sure it ain't mine..) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
Yes there are age problems, but right now I have managed to get the spinning media working on all the machines I work with, it was not that difficult. Yes the media is failing but the stuff that I have that is new or was taken care of is still working for me. So while it works I like to show it. Maybe another 10 years? Maybe more. On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components.
-Dave
On 12/29/2015 10:06 PM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
My view on this is not the fact that we are in able to keep the HARDWARE functioning. We can keep that maintained for 10000 years. The magnetic media utilized by the disk drives have been reaching their end of life, NOS boxes have been opened, used, and found to be damaging to the hardware as the media is sloughing or flaking off the Mylar of the disk itself. So the question becomes restoration vs visual preservation while not losing logical functionality.
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Our exhibit next time won't have the 1541 drives, but will use uIEC instead
to reduce power and troubleshooting.
My $.02 Aw, lets be careful about that. I like the convenience of the SD card file systems and they have their place, but working disk drives are important to the demoing history. This was clear to me at NY Maker, and also was commented to me by several individuals at VCFE. If we can't keep disk drives going, we might as well admit failure on the whole restoration scene.
BTW: I think the IBM PC boot drive is bad too or the DOS floppy in the drive is bad. It boots right into ROM basic.
DC
On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components.
Ugh. I haven't bottom posted since my FidoNet days.. feels.. wrong. Anyway, there are some wonderful analogies in the music world. My family had a wonderful Steinway B piano from the 1930s and I was absolutely convinced we would keep it in the family for another 100 years until my repairman explained that pianos just don't last that long. The famous example is Beethoven's piano, from the early 1800s, which is kept loosely strung and thus cannot be played at all. To do otherwise would risk severe, if not permanent, damage to the piano since the frames are under such a massive amount of tension. I've also seen 300 year old violins completely reconstructed to be essentially brand new. Violins worth $300,000 and more. At the same time, there is a set of Stradivari instruments at the Met Museum worth literally millions of dollars under glass. It is only a matter of time until we will have to decide whether computer museums are for using vintage computers or looking at vintage computers. My take is to have one of each under glass for viewing and, by whatever means necessary, make the other ones work.. a living museum, if you will. I seem to recall the Computer Museum in Mountain View is heading in this direction with several items under museum glass. Too much so, if you ask me, but they get extra points for having a working PDP running Spacewar. I don't see people making modern replicas of floppy disk drives (economies of scale barely support the SD card etc. solutions), but I didn't like floppy drives when they were cutting edge technology, either. So we might be looking at the very real possibility that we can show computers exactly as they looked, but can't use them exactly as they were used, much like Beethoven's piano. And I say this as someone who takes much joy out of showing every one of his high school students what it sounds and looks like to boot 8bit machines with floppy disks. Best wishes, -Adam --- Adam Michlin Computer Science Teacher Pope John XXIII Regional High School Sparta, NJ Administrator: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cptrsci/
Yes, Athana is the one Vendor I found who still manufacturers new floppy disks and other media packs. Maybe we should invite them to display/sell at VCFe. On Wednesday, December 30, 2015, Adam Michlin via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components.
Ugh. I haven't bottom posted since my FidoNet days.. feels.. wrong.
Anyway, there are some wonderful analogies in the music world. My family had a wonderful Steinway B piano from the 1930s and I was absolutely convinced we would keep it in the family for another 100 years until my repairman explained that pianos just don't last that long. The famous example is Beethoven's piano, from the early 1800s, which is kept loosely strung and thus cannot be played at all. To do otherwise would risk severe, if not permanent, damage to the piano since the frames are under such a massive amount of tension. I've also seen 300 year old violins completely reconstructed to be essentially brand new. Violins worth $300,000 and more. At the same time, there is a set of Stradivari instruments at the Met Museum worth literally millions of dollars under glass.
It is only a matter of time until we will have to decide whether computer museums are for using vintage computers or looking at vintage computers. My take is to have one of each under glass for viewing and, by whatever means necessary, make the other ones work.. a living museum, if you will. I seem to recall the Computer Museum in Mountain View is heading in this direction with several items under museum glass. Too much so, if you ask me, but they get extra points for having a working PDP running Spacewar.
I don't see people making modern replicas of floppy disk drives (economies of scale barely support the SD card etc. solutions), but I didn't like floppy drives when they were cutting edge technology, either. So we might be looking at the very real possibility that we can show computers exactly as they looked, but can't use them exactly as they were used, much like Beethoven's piano.
And I say this as someone who takes much joy out of showing every one of his high school students what it sounds and looks like to boot 8bit machines with floppy disks.
Best wishes,
-Adam
--- Adam Michlin Computer Science Teacher Pope John XXIII Regional High School Sparta, NJ Administrator: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cptrsci/
-- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Yes, Athana is the one Vendor I found who still manufacturers new floppy disks and other media packs. Maybe we should invite them to display/sell at VCFe.
On Wednesday, December 30, 2015, Adam Michlin via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On 12/29/2015 10:16 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
We cannot keep the hardware functioning for 10000 years, or even 100 years. There are rubber and plastic components in a lot of this stuff, and they are slowly deteriorating, depolymerizing, and falling to bits.
Our only hope in that are is that accessible, inexpensive, low-volume manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing, mature quickly enough for us to be able to replace those components.
Ugh. I haven't bottom posted since my FidoNet days.. feels.. wrong.
Anyway, there are some wonderful analogies in the music world. My family had a wonderful Steinway B piano from the 1930s and I was absolutely convinced we would keep it in the family for another 100 years until my repairman explained that pianos just don't last that long. The famous example is Beethoven's piano, from the early 1800s, which is kept loosely strung and thus cannot be played at all. To do otherwise would risk severe, if not permanent, damage to the piano since the frames are under such a massive amount of tension. I've also seen 300 year old violins completely reconstructed to be essentially brand new. Violins worth $300,000 and more. At the same time, there is a set of Stradivari instruments at the Met Museum worth literally millions of dollars under glass.
It is only a matter of time until we will have to decide whether computer museums are for using vintage computers or looking at vintage computers. My take is to have one of each under glass for viewing and, by whatever means necessary, make the other ones work.. a living museum, if you will. I seem to recall the Computer Museum in Mountain View is heading in this direction with several items under museum glass. Too much so, if you ask me, but they get extra points for having a working PDP running Spacewar.
I don't see people making modern replicas of floppy disk drives (economies of scale barely support the SD card etc. solutions), but I didn't like floppy drives when they were cutting edge technology, either. So we might be looking at the very real possibility that we can show computers exactly as they looked, but can't use them exactly as they were used, much like Beethoven's piano.
And I say this as someone who takes much joy out of showing every one of his high school students what it sounds and looks like to boot 8bit machines with floppy disks.
Best wishes,
-Adam
--- Adam Michlin Computer Science Teacher Pope John XXIII Regional High School Sparta, NJ Administrator: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cptrsci/
-- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?
Dude - at this point with the many posts here, please snip and bottom post, thanks. Just please try to be more aware of the flow of threads. -- Bill
Blame it on the iPhone. Dude - at this point with the many posts here, please snip and bottom post,
thanks. Just please try to be more aware of the flow of threads.
-- Bill
-- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?
On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 11:49 AM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Blame it on the iPhone.
Dude - at this point with the many posts here, please snip and bottom post,
thanks. Just please try to be more aware of the flow of threads.
-- Bill
Sorry...others can use Apple products and still snip and bottom post. Just do it. -- Bill
On Dec 30, 2015, at 11:12 AM, Joseph Oprysko via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Yes, Athana is the one Vendor I found who still manufacturers new floppy disks and other media packs. Maybe we should invite them to display/sell at VCFe.
Has anyone successfully purchased disks from Athana recently? They never respond to my inquiries.
Ray, We do have them in the warehouse, but for exhibit purposes we want an original 1541. It's for the look since it is Commodore drive with Commodore computer. The Indus might work better, but we want to have all Commodore Brand stuff in the exhibit if possible. Jeff On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 10:45 AM, Ray Sills via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
On Dec 28, 2015, at 1:40 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
No. But in all likelihood 95% of them are not fully functional. This is from experience testing various ones in the past to find a functional one. It becomes burdensome to test all of them. At some point we need to clean or repair them. If you have the time, energy and patience to test all of them, then free to do so!
On Mon, Dec 28, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
until we get a working 1541
There are several in storage. Have we tested them all?
One of the items I donated way back when was an Indus drive… all black, not at all “Commodore-like”. But, if it’s still around, it might work. It’s an operational clone of the 1541, and IMO, was a better drive when I used it.
73 de Ray
On Dec 29, 2015, at 12:13 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Ray,
We do have them in the warehouse, but for exhibit purposes we want an original 1541. It's for the look since it is Commodore drive with Commodore computer. The Indus might work better, but we want to have all Commodore Brand stuff in the exhibit if possible.
Jeff
HI Jeff: Understood. I just wanted to offer an idea to at least get a C-64 or two running, should the need arise. Once upon a time, I had a couple of 1541s, but my experience was that the Indus drives were better. IIRC, it had some sort of “fast load” mode… or maybe I’m thinking of that cartridge by the same name, which did speed things up. 73 de Ray
SD card options exist for TRS-80 model 1 but they tend to be expensive. There is the MISE and of course the FreHD. I have heard that the Gotek drive emulator works with the Model 1 but I have not had a chance to flash mine with the proper firmware to test this yet. I will try it and reply to this thread. These are relatively inexpensive and can be easily moved between computers. On Monday, December 28, 2015, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Doug, Thanks for being docent at the museum today!
I do have programs stored on the uIEC for the Commodore 64 until we get a working 1541. I will show you how to use it. Did you get the name and phone number of that guy?
I would like to get the TRS-80 keyboard and floppy drive working. Is there an SD card that can be connected to this machine?
The Atari has in it's floppy drive Lode Runner. Just turn on the drive, turn on the computer and it boots. We should think of other demos that we want to run on the Atari 800.
The PC also needs some good demos.
On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 9:53 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
Good day at the museum today. Four groups of mostly adults came through with good interest in the displays. One guest pointed at the RCA VIP and said he worked on the R&D fabrication for the RCA 1802 and the related memory parts :) I ran the C64, the TRS-80 Model I, Atari, and the PC with some hello world programs to liven up the place, and had the Lisa booted. Showed well and glad those machines are working.
Yes I have contact info for the 1802 fab guy. I did run the IEC as it turns out. Lode runner :) (Found the notes in the drawer this time) The TRS-80 needs quite a bit of work. I did not find much to work with in inventory last time I checked. It will take an entire workshop to get it really up to snuff. Atari- Lode runner on disk... I guess that's why the BASIC cart was out of it. Cool. On 12/28/2015 1:26 AM, Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Doug, Thanks for being docent at the museum today!
I do have programs stored on the uIEC for the Commodore 64 until we get a working 1541. I will show you how to use it. Did you get the name and phone number of that guy?
I would like to get the TRS-80 keyboard and floppy drive working. Is there an SD card that can be connected to this machine?
The Atari has in it's floppy drive Lode Runner. Just turn on the drive, turn on the computer and it boots. We should think of other demos that we want to run on the Atari 800.
The PC also needs some good demos.
On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 9:53 PM, Douglas Crawford via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Good day at the museum today. Four groups of mostly adults came through with good interest in the displays. One guest pointed at the RCA VIP and said he worked on the R&D fabrication for the RCA 1802 and the related memory parts :) I ran the C64, the TRS-80 Model I, Atari, and the PC with some hello world programs to liven up the place, and had the Lisa booted. Showed well and glad those machines are working.
participants (13)
-
Adam Michlin -
Dan Roganti -
Dave McGuire -
Dean Notarnicola -
Douglas Crawford -
Duane -
Evan Koblentz -
Jason Howe -
Jeffrey Brace -
Joseph Oprysko -
Peter Cetinski -
Ray Sills -
william degnan